Arkham Origins Developer Working On A New Title

Batman Arkham: Origins was a disappointment but still a decently good game if you can complete it without the game trying to kill itself. Over half a year later and Arkham Origins is still broken. Since then the game has had eight pieces of DLC, is rumoured to be getting a Complete Edition that will come bundled with said DLC and the developer has now moved on.

Warner Bros Montreal simply doesn’t care about the state of Arkham Origins it seems and is moving on to greener, buggier pastures.

Audio designer Dustin Reid revealed in his resume that WB Montreal is hard at work on something for Xbox One and PS4. Mentions of this unannounced triple-A title can be found in the profiles of several other developers at the studio.

“Now working on a new AAA project that is just starting. Currently lead the Design team and help starting some prototypes,” is what you’ll find if you hit up the LinkedIn profile of Arkham Origins lead game designer Pierre-Luc Foisy.

It’s not another Batman game but perhaps another superhero game? There have been rumours of a Suicide Squad with their newfound popularity and the immense popularity of Deathstroke at the moment. That’s something I’d like to see but maybe just not from the studio that broke Batman.

“Warner Bros Montreal simply doesn’t care about the state of Arkham Origins”

Have you got any idea what rubbish that statement is? Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is the publisher, Warner Bros Montreal is the developer. The developer’s would love to have the time to sit down and polish their title to perfection. The publisher wants money, and therefore doesn’t give a flying kite what state the title is in – as long as they have their money.

Your opening statement is what kills the morale of the poor hardworking people that actually make the games. I’d expect more from someone that calls themselves the editor of a gaming news site.

AG_Sonday

Admittedly, I was harsh on them in that statement but when I referred to WB Montreal (and this should have been clarified) I spoke of the company as an entity which is to say the people running and controlling it. I understand that the developers don’t willingly rush a game out to release.

They did decent work but in the same breath one has to consider that WB Montreal wasn’t forced onto a new project immediately. The studio has steadily been releasing DLC for the game. That in itself is actually a good thing however, they’ve spent this time working on numerous DLC rather than fixing the game. I know of at least 3 people who played it just this past month and encountered game-breaking issues.

Meanwhile DICE had similar issues with BF 4 at launch but halted development of DLC to fix the game.

To clarify, I was harsh and mean no disrespect to the people who put effort and time into Origins but I take issue with not only the priorities of the publisher but the studio itself.

http://egmr.net/ Azhar Lorgat

I do hear your point, and I agree with the intention behind it, as we also do try to give developers a break and support them as much as possible. But you do need to also understand that not every developer is like that and, more importantly, you also can’t always absolve developers of all blame as if they’re always an innocent victim. Sometimes accountability does need to be taken, especially in this case where the game released in an unfit state (more significant since its predecessors were polished to the highest level apart from that one save bug Arkham City had), as a whole received the lowest ratings in the series by a country mile, and had DLC being worked on despite the game not being fixed, which is a similar issue with Battlefield 4.

CodeDisQus

I played the game from start to finsih and didn’t have any problems with it at all, the only problem i had, as a PC gamer was the nonsense on the day of release, besides that….NOTHING, and to say it was decent is unfair it was a pretty good game! People moaned that they didn’t have the original voice actors (who did a great job btw), but unfortunately Kevin Conroy was busy doing Arkham Knight at the time, people complained that it was just Arkham City v1.5 well, how is that a bad thing :/ ? Arkham city was FANTASTIC and they just took what was awesome, added some BETTER boss battles, which is what just about EVERYONE was complaining about with Arkham City, added more enemies that made fights pretty intense and challenging, slightly better gfx all wrapped in a story that did not fail to deliver AT all!

So please, can we please stop bashing the good work that WB Montreal did, they may not have taken the Arkham franchise and cranked it up to level 11, but they certainly did not “break” it as is suggested!

AG_Sonday

I had no problems either funnily enough but I know of many horror stories regarding the game.
What I mean by decent is that I enjoyed it, there were some great bits but a lot that fell a little flat. Personally, I loved the new voice actors. A big part of my issues was the narrative, especially how they pull Joker into it. It was a tired trick. Some boss battles were good, others were not.

I didn’t go into it with high expectations but I was at least hoping for something that felt like an origin-era story.

When I said break, I didn’t mean they ruined the franchise. Sure, I’m harsh on WB Montreal but I meant it as a play on words alluding to the fact that the game has been plagued by so many game-breaking issues.

It was a decent effort from a studio with virtually no prior titles and hopefully they’ve learnt a lot for this next title.

http://egmr.net/ Azhar Lorgat

It’s easy to use the fact that you didn’t have problems with the game as justification that the problems weren’t severe. I played it on two platforms and had problems, another writer on our site had his save deleted, and on top of that the issues were widespread and the reception was the lowest by a country mile.

I agree that the voice actors were awesome, and it was a highlight mentioned in my review.

I could write an essay on why I believe Arkham Origins is a weak entry in the series, but it’s subjective and I did review the game. The bottom line is that in comparison to Rocksteady’s work, many believe (including me) that Origins doesn’t come close (especially with the design of the world, which is dead) and it being Arkham City 1.5 was a bad thing for many since Rocksteady had a benchmark and this series wasn’t about churning out more games just because people like Batman. Origins was incremental, where as the first two weren’t.

I’d place the blame at the publisher as usual. We all have our opinions and I’m chilled out with you thinking it’s a good game, but I disagree with it being “unfair” to call it decent since it isn’t a small party that criticised it. It’s got mixed reception all over the board, and the technical issues were widespread.

Wayne Jacobs

After the disappointment with Batman Arkham: Origins, I don’t even want to see a new title…

http://www.lomag.co.za/ NeoN

Not surprised to read that they’ve moved on to another project, as disappointing as it may be for those waiting for a fix to Origins.

As for their next AAA title, I can’t wait to see what it is – and also hope it comes out on the PC. :P